Make the Grammys More Like the Oscars

By Mike Doughty

Feb. 13, 2017

Anybody who tells you that Adele’s “Hello” or Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” aren’t masterpieces of human culture is not your friend. But those who cite the huge hitmakers — Ariana Grande, Rihanna, Demi Lovato — on the list of Grammy nominees, and note that the top-echelon awards go to artists who are widely known have a point. In these times, an awards show broadcast focused almost entirely on artists who already make a ton of money is not smart business.

The Oscars are a vehicle to promote smart films that aren’t destined to be blockbusters. The producers of “Moonlight” and “Manchester by the Sea” are masterfully exploiting their Oscars nominations to make those films profitable. And the cable networks and video-streaming services, over years of fiercely campaigning for shows like “Breaking Bad,” have transformed the Golden Globes from a mechanism for narrowing Oscar odds into a cultural force. They have monetized prestige itself.

Leading up to the announcement of the Golden Globe and Oscar nominations, envelopes of DVDs marked “for your consideration” are stacked high on the desks of people in the film and TV industry, and practically every ad in every industry publication encourages readers to take a look at this or that lesser-known venture. Not so with music. Why not?

Nobody in film was baffled that the best picture prize in 2015 went to “Birdman” instead of “The Avengers: Age of Ultron.” In music, however, when an artist like Sturgill Simpson gets a nod for album of the year, half of the music business is happily surprised.

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Sturgill Simpson performing at the Grammy Awards on Sunday.CreditChristopher Polk/Getty Images for Naras

That’s crazy. Every single Grammy voter should be completely buried in “for your consideration” campaigns for artists like Lydia Loveless, José González and Leikeli47 for whom nominations in a major category would bring real commercial juice. Why are record companies and artists’ managers not putting some marketing dough into promoting their artists for the Grammys?

There are, of course, a ton of smaller, less well-known acts that get Grammys, but the bulk of them get their awards before the broadcast. This year, for instance, only nine of the 84 prizes were awarded on television. Wouldn’t it be commercially worthwhile, during the show, to take two minutes to showcase winners like Snarky Puppy (contemporary instrumental album), Sarah Jarosz (American roots performance), Fantastic Negrito (contemporary blues album)? Nobody suddenly discovers Adele while watching the awards, but somebody might stumble on, and fall in love with, Gregory Porter (jazz vocal album). To belabor my film and TV analogy, “Transparent” and “La La Land” profit enormously from award shows. Drake and Justin Bieber do not.

In 2013, Mumford & Sons won album of the year for a recording that relied heavily on the banjo. I half-expected that, the next year, we would see 30 seconds of the bluegrass album winner (the Del McCoury Band) — if listeners are paying to hear some banjos, maybe they could get served a little more of what they want? But no.

I make my living making records that are probably a little too strange for the pop mainstream. I definitely have a dog in this fight. But I’m not talking about artistic merit — I’m talking about business. I look at the Grammys and see a lost commercial opportunity.

Unless YouTube wakes up one morning and decides to pay decently, everybody in music — not just us artists, but people who engineer recordings, who negotiate deals, who design posters and hundreds of other jobs — will continue to suffer the financial consequences of our industry’s long-term slump. How great it would be if we could find new ways to grow.